Have you ever wondered how to add a PayPal button to your WordPress blog or website? In this article I’ll show you how easy it is to add a PayPal button to your blog.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how to set up the process to give away or sell books on your blog. This is the next article in that series, and today I’ll show you how to integrate PayPal into the process. So in this example, we assume you want to sell an e-book or product on your website and your customers will pay for that product via PayPal.

Firstly, you head over to the PayPal website and login. Once you login, you’ll see some options across the top menu – you select the one labelled ‘Merchant Services’.

Once you’re in the “Merchant Services” section you will see an option to create payment buttons for your website. There are a few options depending on what you are selling, and usually you will select the ‘Sell Individual Items’ button.

Once you’ve selected the ‘Create One Now’ hyperlink, you’ll be taken to a page that has a number of options with regards to how to build the button. There are quite a few options here, but thankfully, PayPal has broken down into three recently simple steps.

Most of us are selling a digital product, so we don’t need to bother about things like inventory.

The main choices are from step three, which is where you can customise some of the advanced features of the button. The important thing to make sure we fill out is the option that is called ‘ take customers to this URL when they finish check out’. This is pretty self-explanatory, but this is where you enter the URL of the page on your blog or website where the product can be downloaded. I’ve previously written an article about how to hide pages in WordPress – have a read of that article if you have any confusion about how to do this.

Once you’ve completed this step, then we obtain the HTML code to insert the button onto our website.

You’ll be taken to a new page, which has instructions for inserting code into your website.

On the right hand side, you will see an image of the button, and on the left-hand side will be the code.

Right click on the code to copy it. Within WordPress open up the sales page that you need to insert this button into.

Position your cursor where you want the button to be inserted, and select the HTML option at the top of the visual editor. Once you’re in the HTML view, simply paste the code that you’ve copied from the PayPal site.

Now in the Visual Editor you switch back to the ‘Visual’ tab. You should be able to see the button in the correct position.

So, now that you have created the button and added it to your website, let’s look at the sales process:

1. A customer comes to your sales page and clicks on the buy now button to purchase.
2. They are taken to the PayPal website, where they complete the transaction.
3. Once the payment is complete, they are redirected back to your website. They are directed to a hidden page that you have created within WordPress, where the product is available to be downloaded.

Now, this is a very simplistic way of setting up your website for purchases. There are other plug-ins that you can purchase to protect the download area, and also to integrate Aweber into the process, so that people who purchase your item are also instantly subscribed to a mailing list.

I hope this explains the process simply enough for you. If you have any questions or queries, please leave a comment below and let me know what you would like to learn.

photo credit: mysza831

I’ve been asked by a couple of people how to set up a process to giveaway or sell eBooks on their websites. It’s a relatively simple process to set up and I’ll describe it below. For this article I’ll base the instructions on using Headway as your WordPress theme. If you don’t use Headway, the steps are still the same; it’s just the way you do it may be different.

There’s not a lot of difference between how you set things up to giveaway a book, or to sell it. I’ll show you how to do both in this example.

Looking at it from the customer’s point of view, here is the process:

The instructions here show you how to do it in reverse. It’s easiest to do it in this order, as the steps link to each other. Before you create your download page, you need to upload the e-book. Before you set up Aweber or PayPal, you need to create the download page.

Step 1 – getting your book onto the site.

Firstly, you’ll need to upload your ebook.  Make sure it’s a pdf file and saved to your hard drive. Within WordPress, you add the e-book just like you’d add a picture. You go to the add media section, browse to the file on your hard drive, and upload it to your site. Once it’s uploaded, a box will appear with information about the file – name, etc. Take note of the ‘file location’ and save this URL – you’ll need it later.

Step 2 – Create a download page

The next step is to create a page that people can access your book from. In WordPress using Headway, this is simple. You create a hidden page in WordPress, insert whatever text you want, and insert a link to the book. The two most popular ways to link to the book are via a text link or a picture. To do this via a text link, you do it, just like you would link to any external URL through WordPress. You highlight your anchor text, click the link button in the WordPress menu, and insert the URL. In this case, the URL you will insert is the one that you obtain from step one – the location of the PDF file.

If you’re linking to it via an image, it’s a slightly different process. You may have an image of your e-book front cover that you wish to display on the page and you may prefer that people click on this image to download the e-book. If that’s the case, you insert the image the same way you would insert an image in WordPress (after first uploading it to your site) and as you’re inserting the image, WordPress will give you the option of creating a link location. You simply cut and paste the link from step one and insert it here. Now, when people click on the image, they’ll be taken directly to the PDF file.

In most cases, you’ll want to keep this download page hidden, because you want people to perform an action before they can access the page. To keep it hidden, and to minimise the chance of someone finding it, make sure you don’t call it ‘download’. Make up a name with lots of random characters in it.

Step 3 – Set up your ‘gateway’ page and third party details.

Now that you’ve uploaded your book to your website and set up a page that people can download it from, its time to look at the front-end of the process.

The two parts to step three are:

1. Setting up the gateway page on your website.
2. Setting up your details with the third party – this could be PayPal or Aweber.

So, what we’re doing here is setting up a page on your website that is visible to everyone. On this page you want people to perform an action – either giving you their e-mail details, or clicking on a Buy Now button. In exchange for doing these actions, they will be taken to the page you set up in step two.

Setting up the page on your website is easy. You just create a new page as you usually would and insert your text. If this is a sales page, and you are selling a product via PayPal, the next step is to you to go to the PayPal website and set up a buy now button. I won’t go into how to do that in this blog post, but it is a relatively simple thing to do. Once you have set up the buy now button, you’ll be added copy some code from PayPal that you will insert on your website. In WordPress, as you’re editing the page, switch to the HTML view, position the cursor where you want the buy now button to appear and paste the text you obtain from the PayPal website.

If all has gone well, when you preview this page there should be a PayPal online now button included in your sales copy.

So, how do they get from buying the product via PayPal to the download page? When you’re setting up your buy now button within PayPal, there will be an extra field you can add into the shopping cart setup, which is the URL of your download page. So, when the transaction is completed, PayPal will automatically redirect the customer to your download page.

An alternate option if you’re not selling a product is to give it away in exchange for a customer’s e-mail address. I do this using Aweber and it’s a really simple thing to set up. Again, I won’t go into detail how to create that in this article, but will do a follow-up post with these details.  Copy and paste the HTML code from Aweber into your sales page in the same manner that you would paste the PayPal text.

When you’re setting up the new e-mail capture formed in Aweber, there are a couple of things to be aware of.

Firstly, Aweber works on a double opt in system. This means that the customer receives an e-mail from Aweber that contains a confirmation link in it. The customer isn’t subscribed to your list until they click on the link in the confirmation e-mail. Once they complete step one, direct them to another page on your site that tells them that they’re close to the download page, but they need to check their emails to complete the subscription.

Within Aweber, you also have to nominate a URL that the subscriber is redirected to once they have clicked the confirmation link. This URL will be the URL for your download page.

Summary

So, that’s the process. From the customer’s perspective, they start on a sales page, where they take action, either to sign up to an e-mail list, or to purchase something. To facilitate the sign up/purchase they are directed to PayPal or Aweber, where they complete the transaction. Once the transaction is completed, or they have confirmed their e-mail subscription, they are taken to your hidden download page. The item that you are selling or giving way is linked to from this download page.

If you have multiple products, then there are a couple ways you can do this. If you’re selling multiple products, then you will need a separate download page for each product, because you don’t want a customer to have access to all the books if they have only bought one.

On the other hand, if you are giving away different e-books, you may be comfortable having all the free e-books on the one download page.

Finally, a quick thought on your download page. Whilst it is possible to have the e-book delivered by e-mail through your Aweber service, I prefer to direct the customer to your website to download the e-book. When they are on a page on your website, you are able to direct them to other pages that could be of interest. So if your e-book is on a certain topic, direct them to other articles you’ve written on the same topic. The download page could also be a good opportunity for you to promote other products, either from yourself or from other people.

Thanks for reading through this article. I hope it has been helpful to you. Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think. If there are other articles that you’d like me to write on a similar theme, please send me a message via my contact page.

I’ve had a few conversations with people in recent weeks asking how to schedule a post in WordPress so it is posted some time in the future.  It’s a very simple process to do this and I’ll outline the steps here.

Why bother scheduling posts?

You may have a lot of international readers who read your blog while you’re asleep.  You may prefer to time your blog posts to fit in with their schedules and browsing habits.

You may want to take some time away from your blog and computer, but still want to update your blog.  Why not write a series of posts in advance and schedule them to be delivered at certain times.

How do I schedule a blog post in WordPress?

Firstly, write the post using the WordPress ‘Add New Post’ menu option.  Get the post ready for completion, add your tags,  Categories etc, but don’t hit publish.

Have a look at the options on the top right hand side of your menu.

Just above the Publish button you’ll see the words “Publish immediately Edit’.  Hit the word ‘Edit’ to open a new menu.

This new menu will give you the option to select the time and date that the post will go live.

Select the month, date and time and hit the OK button.  This will close the menu.

Once you’ve hit OK you’ll see that the ‘Publish Immediately’ option has disappeared and in it’s place is the date and time that your post is due to go live.

Also, the ‘Publish’ button has been replaced with a ‘Schedule’ button.

Double check the date and time to make sure it’s OK, and hit the ‘Schedule’ button.  Your post has now been scheduled.

If you decide you want to change the scheduling details, you can!  Alongside the date and time is an ‘Edit’ button.  Click on this and the scheduling menu will open again, enabling you to make changes.

So, now that you’ve learnt how to schedule posts in WordPress, your next question might be ‘When should I schedule posts’.

When should I schedule posts?

Is there a ‘good’ time to make a post go live? Are there ‘bad’ times to make a post?

I think the simple answer is ‘it depends’.

Ask yourself this question – how do people read your articles?  Do they visit your blog, do they subscribe by RSS feed or by email?

Subscribing by RSS is the most instant way to get updated blog posts.  You post to your blog and soon afterwards it gets added to your feed.  Feed readers check your feed and download it to people’s RSS applications where they read it.  So if you post at 9.00am, it will appear in RSS feeds soon afterward.

If a lot of your subscribers choose to subscribe by email, check how your feed is set up.  If you use Google Feedburner, you have an option for emails to be sent at a certain time every day when there’s a new post.  If this is deactivated, then I believe the email is sent soon after there’s an addition to your RSS feed.

In this Tim Ferriss video he talks about some research he’d done to determine which days and times were most effective to schedule posts.  The important thing to remember is that this is based on his viewers, who may have different reading habits to you.

Have a think about your target market. If they’re business people who will read your blog / receive your emails as part of their job, then post when they’ll see it, perhaps first thing in the morning.  Have a think geographically where they are, and make sure you post at a time suitable for them.

For work-related emails I try not to send anything on a Friday, or Monday.  I tend to send emails Tuesday to Thursday.

For this blog, I’m less fussed.  I have a lot of subscribers via RSS so I know that they’re going to see there’s a new post to view when they open their viewer.

What do you think?  Do you have a preferred time to post?  How did you decide on the best time?  Let me know in the comments section below.